I get the sense that you are looking at purchasing just the camera body? Newegg* has the D5000, body only at $769.99 and the D90, body only, for $ 929.99 and that is only a difference of $160.
I have to agree with sudirdjo regarding the LCD, the only advantage to having an articulated LCD is if you are shooting in Live View and as has pointed out, Live View as currently installed on Nikons is almost useless. The AF is so slow you virtually have to use a tripod. I thought Live View would come in handy for close-ups but that didn’t turn out to be a valid assumption. The other problem is that in bright sunlight, where I do most of my close-ups, the LCD is almost impossible to see, and the D90 has a far superior LCD image wise. The D90 has a 3” 920,000 pixel LCD compared to the 2.7 inch 230,000 pixel LCD found on the D5000; that’s 8% larger than the LCD on the D80 but with the same number of dots so the resolution is actually down.
Much of what follows I posted in another thread also concerning the D5000 vs. the D90.
I had the D50 and upgraded to the D90. Had the D5000 been available at the same time I would have passed on the D5000.
Is the D90 a better camera than the D5000? That depends entirely on how you define better. For me it is easily $160 better; the cost difference between the D90 and the D5000.
What I wanted when I made my upgrade.
I wanted to be able to utilize off-camera wireless flash utilizing the Nikon CLS system. I have a single SB-600 and it works very well in this regard; I paid $220 for my SB-600. To gain wireless flash on the D5000 I would have to add either the SB-900 (B&H no longer sells the SB-800) or a SU-800 and that adds another $470 for the SB-900 or $255 for the SU-800 to the cost of the D5000. So right off the D5000 costs a minimum of $95 more than the D90 if the user has any aspirations of ever using off-camera flash.
I pretty much hated the menu system on the D50 and the lack of non-menu controls. I’m sure, like the D40/60/80 the menu system is much improved on the D5000, but there is still an acute lack of non-menu controls. The two command wheels make the camera a joy to use; I shoot a lot in the “A” mode and the front wheel controls the aperture and the rear wheel the ISO. I also can change the shooting mode, metering mode, AF mode, exposure compensation, and AF-area using dedicated controls without having to enter a menu.
I personally do not like the ergonomics of the D5000, it just feels awkward in my hands. I also would miss the top control panel. A real deal breaker for me is the fact that the focus point cannot be locked. I have to shoot left-eyed and my nose was always touching the multi-selector on the D50 and changing the focus point, so a locking multi-selector was a must have; the D5000 does not have this feature and even if don’t shoot left-eyed it is sometime very handy to be able to lock in a focus point.
I would also have to replace my 50mm f/1.8 lens and that coupled with the extra cost of adding wireless flash to the D5000 makes the D5000 not only more expensive than the D90 but its ergonomics and features fall far short. The only improvement I see is the articulated LCD but as I already stated I see little need or use for.
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http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2075540784%2050001247&name=Nikon%20Inc
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Brooks
http://bmiddleton.smugmug.com/ 